


saw your face, heard your name

by xx_bittersweet_merlin



Series: naruto wlw fics [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Dorks in Love, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 01:57:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13284504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xx_bittersweet_merlin/pseuds/xx_bittersweet_merlin
Summary: They were fourteen, and Anko glanced down at her from the tree above her, sighed, and said "Boys are stupid. Girls are better."They were eighteen, and Anko smirked as she complained about her boyfriend and asked, "Want me to drop in on him?"They were twenty, and Kurenai finally said "I love you."





	saw your face, heard your name

The first time Kurenai met Anko, the other girl was standing at her master’s side and watching a sparring match between her two teammates with a blank expression.

Well, no, that had been the first time she’d _seen_ Anko. And actually, it wasn’t the first time- she’d met Anko before, when they were in the Academy, when a little purple-haired goblin came dancing out of nowhere to stick a pocky stick into Asuma’s nose and run away giggling like a hyena.

Kurenai had met her again, worked on an assignment with her that required a partner, and she’d had trouble keeping up with Anko’s logic and work ethic- which swerved in every direction and was full of distractions and rabbit trails- but she’d had an oddly efficient way of getting work done that looked as if she wasn’t working at all. It was also rather fun, if she was being honest.

The point was, her memories of when she met or saw Anko for the first time or the second time were mixed up and confusing. Much like the woman herself.

The next time she met Anko they were both older. She was sitting in the grass by herself, back against a tree, fourteen years old and crying over something dumb Asuma had said. She felt even dumber, fourteen, a chuunin, and thinking she shouldn’t care at all. Anko was fourteen years old and closed off to everyone but the few who weren’t afraid of her for being left behind by her master. She never took off her coat and Kurenai never asked her to.

But when they were fourteen, she’d been sat in the tree above her, had glanced down, sighed, and said- “Boys, huh?”

Kurenai had startled like a wild rabbit and stared up at her with wide eyes and a racing heart. “U-uh,” she sniffled, trying in vain to wipe at her face. She recognized the girl from the Academy, placed a name to her face, but they weren’t friends. “Y-yeah.”

“Which one was it?”

“Which one?” Kurenai stared at her for a moment before her brain caught up with the conversation and she turned to stare at the trees with another sniffle. “Asuma.”

“What’d he say?”

Kurenai’s lip wobbled. “A couple of boys were talking about the prettiest girls.”

“You care about that sort of thing?”

“N-not really, but…he said I was plain-looking.”

“Well, you are kinda plain,” Anko returned honestly, sounding baffled. “What’s so bad about that?”

Kurenai turned to look up at her with watery eyes. “He said that like it made me _not_ pretty,” she explained.

“Well that’s stupid,” the other girl replied bluntly, wearing a bored expression. “I mean, all girls are pretty. You’re pretty, too.”

“Really? You think so?”

“Yeah. You’ve got really pretty eyes.” Anko stared at her with an oddly intense expression that made Kurenai fiddle with the hem of her dress, not sure whether she was uncomfortable or not. “Boys are stupid.”

A knot of tension in her shoulders relaxed. There was something about the way the other girl had said it that made her want to laugh. “Yeah,” she hiccupped, wiping her cheeks. “Boys are stupid.”

“Girls are better,” the other girl said, still with the strange intensity. Kurenai thought now that it didn’t really make her uncomfortable, she just didn’t understand it. “I’m Anko.”

“Oh, I know,” Kurenai said, before realizing that was rude. “I-I mean, I’m Kurenai. Do you want to…go get dango?”

A wide grin flashed onto Anko’s face. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

She hopped down from the tree as Kurenai got up and walked alongside her with a confident swagger that Kurenai couldn’t tell whether it was faked or not. She pulled down her eyelid and stuck her tongue out at the group of boys when they passed them.

They went for dango every Saturday after that.

* * *

 

“I don’t know. Do you think I should say yes? I feel like I should say yes. I just don’t really know if I like him. I don’t want to say yes just because I want a date. But I _do_ want a date…but I don’t want to lead him on. But it’s just a festival, it’s not like we’re getting married. What do you think?”

“Hmm,” Anko hummed, eyes skimming the magazine in her hand as she chewed on a dango stick. She appeared bored and uninterested to most, but Kurenai knew that was just how she was. There were times she pulled up extremely specific details she’d heard while appearing to be totally ignoring her. “I think boys are stupid.”

A sixteen-year-old Kurenai huffed and dropped onto her desk chair, folding her arms. Anko lay sprawled out over her bed, hogging most of it. “I mean…he’s not Asuma-” Anko rolled her eyes. “But Asuma hasn’t shown any sign of asking me.”

“You could ask him.”

“Girls aren’t supposed to ask, though.”

“That’s dumb.”

“That’s how the festival works,” Kurenai retorted, a blush rising to her cheeks. Anko shrugged at her.

“What do you _really_ want to do?”

Kurenai was silent for a moment as she pondered the question. After a minute or two of silence, she mumbled out her answer with a heavier blush than before. “I want to go with Asuma.”

“Then ask him,” Anko replied with a roll of her eyes, turning to a new page.

“But I can’t!” Kurenai would resolutely deny later that she was whining. She flopped onto the bed and curled up around Anko’s feet, burying her face in the quilt. “He has to ask me.”

Anko let out a put-upon sigh and tossed her magazine to the floor. She never did take great care in keeping Kurenai’s room clean. Or her own. “All right, fine. I’ll drop in on lover-boy and knock some sense into him for you.”

Kurenai’s head shot up. “You aren’t going to hit him, are you?” she squeaked, alarmed.

Anko huffed. “No,” she lied. She absolutely planned on hitting him if he didn’t measure up. “I’ll just use my bad words.”

Kurenai’s eyes shined. It was almost worth getting her a date with the boy whose nose she’d skewered with a dango stick. “Really? Anko, you’re the best!”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll get you your date so you can go be sickeningly sweet at the festival-whatever.”

“Aren’t you going?”

“Really? Who’d ask me?”

Kurenai chewed on her lip for a moment. “Genma probably would if I asked,” she suggested.

Anko stared at her, face betraying nothing. “You don’t have to do that,” she said, shrugging. “I’ll just ask someone. I’m not as worried about it as you.”

A small pout appeared on Kurenai’s face. “That’s breaking the rules, but ok.”

That weekend, she spent two hours with one hand wrapped around Asuma’s elbow, sheepishly failing at festival games, stuttering over their words, and sending each other shy smiles. She didn’t see Anko there. She would later learn Anko had gone with a girl. She wouldn’t know how that made her feel.

* * *

 

Kurenai was eighteen and sat on her desk pulling at her hair in frustration while the paint on her toenails dried. “He’s just so frustrating!” she snapped, having been ranting for over ten minutes. “First he wants to see me, then he doesn’t, then he thinks we should have a date, then he thinks we should take a break. ‘I feel like I like you too much.’ What does that even mean?”

Anko looked up at her over the top of a catalog that sold various sharp objects and smirked. “Want me to drop in on him?” she asked, licking her lips methodically at the idea. “I have my ways, you know.”

Kurenai rolled her eyes. “I don’t want you to torture him, Anko.”

“And here I thought you supported my hobbies.”

“I said that about drawing and you know it!”

Anko huffed and sat up. She’d started wearing a trench coat everywhere, said it was “her style,” said that she needed one as a tokubetsu jounin. Kurenai was just a little jealous of the title. “Not that I’m not here to hear you rant about your on-again-off-again…” She surveyed Kurenai’s face with a small leer meant to tease. “ _Illicit affair-_ ”

“Anko!”

“But I thought we were going to order dango and watch that stupid show you like,” Anko finished, shrugging in a devil-may-care way and turning her eyes to Kurenai’s television, which sat dark in the corner of her room. There was a slight awkwardness to her as she waited for Kurenai’s response; maybe it was _because_ she was waiting for her response, as she never said things that hinged on what others would say.

“Oh.” Kurenai felt a bit guilty at having took up so much of their time- it was difficult finding a lot of time to spend together, now that they were both older and had more responsibilities- with her own complaining. “No, you’re right. You call that place you like, I’ll get you as much as you want.” The only place in Konoha that, for some reason, delivered custom-made dango orders.

Anko beamed at her. “Now you’re speaking my language,” she laughed, diving for Kurenai’s phone. Her friend couldn’t help but smile seeing the gleam in her eye as the corner of her tongue peeked over her lip. Nothing could light Anko up like dango could. Kurenai wished her friend would smile- genuinely smile- more often, instead of the smirks and teasing grins she put up for everyone else.

“I need a distraction anyway,” she continued, partially to herself as she looked for her remote. Spending time with Anko was always a nice distraction.

* * *

 

“Listen, punk,” Anko snarled, holding a boy twice her size up against the fence with a good two inches between his feet and the ground. She was fifteen and had a nose piercing that glinted with light every time lightning crackled overhead from the incoming storm. It wasn’t raining yet, but the air already felt wet. “You ever try to spread some shit rumor about my friend again I’m gonna cut your balls off, you hear?”

The boy who’d been telling his friends that Asuma and Kurenai had broken up because of some horrible deformity Kurenai possessed nodded, terrified. She pressed him further into the fence so she could hold him with one arm and slipped a kunai from her sleeve, tracing it in a figure eight pattern on his cheek. His eyes flitted down to follow the blade as his jaw trembled. “Don’t think I wouldn’t enjoy it, either,” she stage-whispered, letting a slightly unhinged smile onto her face. He let out a meek noise of affirmation. “Get out of here.”

She released him and he took off as soon as his feet hit the ground. “Asshole,” she muttered, pocketing the kunai and huffing. She glanced up when a raindrop hit her nose and glared at the sky. Rain meant that Kurenai would probably be wearing some bulky raincoat instead of the crimson jacket Anko had gotten her for her birthday that matched her eyes and hugged her in all the right ways. Anko loved that fucking jacket. “Fuck you too.”

* * *

 

“Hey, um…Anko?”

Anko hummed affirmatively from her place on the sofa in the jounin station, which many chuunin frequented despite its name. Kurenai glanced over at her from her place on the chair at the end of the room. A clipboard sat in her lap, holding a mission report halfway filled out.

“Do you, uh…” Kurenai trailed off and Anko made no move to prompt her to go on. “You like girls, right?”

“Hmm-mhm,” Anko replied, not taking her eyes off the magazine advertising a hundred-stick dango prize.

“Oh. Yeah. Right.” Kurenai glanced down at her report again. “…yeah…girls…”

* * *

 

Kurenai was twenty. Confidence had evaded her as a child, but she was a jounin now, she’d killed people now, she’d had to _watch people die now_ , and confidence had come like a quiet package in the night.

She still considered herself a bit plain, but she knew if there was one thing that scared people, it was her eyes. Red eyes were rare and reminded people of the Sharingan. A little ironic, considering genjutsu was her specialty. Kurenai was a competent fighter, but it would never be her best strength, and illusions gave one so many options to intimidate others.

Even their friends weren’t always aware that Kurenai and Anko were best friends, and those who were usually thought Anko was the scary one. Anko _was_ scary, but Kurenai thought people underestimated her unduly.

“I don’t care what you thought you were doing,” she said, her voice a low hiss as she leaned forward threateningly. The man in her illusion’s grasp flinched away from her. Of course she recognized him- she recognized everyone from their old graduating class. One of the class jokers, who probably still thought they were in the same stage as they were when they were fifteen-year-old genin, whose pranks always went too far. She slammed her foot down on his camera. He opened his mouth, obviously wanting to protest, but closed it with a gulp when the tree roots that weren’t real tightened around him. Her eyes looked as if they glowed ominously in the darkness around them. “ _Never_ bother my friend again. I will bury you in a genjutsu so deep your mind will never find its way out. Do you understand me?”

Blanching, the chuunin in front of her nodded rapidly. She released him and stepped back, glaring as he slunk away from her with his head ducked in shame. She wondered if Anko had even known he was aiming at her window.

Anko was her best friend. No one messed with her and got away with it.

* * *

 

When Asuma got hurt on a mission, Kurenai was concerned. Everyone knew she was kindhearted and even if the two weren’t dating currently, of course she would be worried. She thought hurrying to the hospital after finishing up what she was working on to see her ~~boyfriend~~ friend was a lot to deal with.

Then someone told her Anko had been brought back injured, and her heart stopped. Smirking, strong, sassy Anko, who hadn’t been able to walk herself back.

The training session she was in the middle of stopped immediately. She ran to the hospital so fast Gai called out to her that her “youth was flaming.” She skidded into that hospital room and found Anko reading a magazine in bed, and she raised an eyebrow when she noticed Kurenai panting in the doorway. “What’s got your panties in a twist?”

(And maybe, when Kurenai told her that she was worried about her, the way she grinned and called her darling as she teased her for it made her fall in love a little bit more.)

* * *

 

She’d cared about Asuma. He’d been her first crush, her teenage on-and-off-again sweetheart, and a good friend to her even if he frustrated her at times. She _still_ cared about him.

But Anko, she’d realized, was something special no one could replace. Kurenai thought about her a _lot_ \- wondering if she was taking care of herself, if she’d had something to eat other than dango, if her nightmares were coming back. Anko had always been there for her, whether it was with a quippy remark or letting Kurenai cry into her shoulder and making a joke about ruining her beloved trench coat to ease the tension. Anko had never once left her alone to deal with anything by herself, even if they were fighting at the time.

Losing Asuma, she thought, she could deal with. But losing Anko? It would break her in half.

_“You like girls, right?”_

_“Hmm-mhm.”_

She couldn’t help but wonder if Anko had ever thought of them dating.

* * *

 

Kurenai wondered if Anko realized what Kurenai thought about for months, unable to leave the idea alone once it occurred to her, whether she noticed the glances Kurenai stole that she hadn’t used to, whether she saw how Kurenai stopped looking at Asuma.

Every smile Anko gave her felt like honey. Every inside joke they shared in snickers made her want to wrap an arm over the other woman’s shoulder and giggle into the trench coat. Every time she heard her friend’s heels clicking down the hallway towards her in the Hokage Tower she felt her heart do a flip.

* * *

 

“Er, Asuma…”

“This is a break-up call, isn’t it?”

“Um…I’m sorry.”

“No, no, not like we’re not used to it, right? Hah.”

“Yeah, but…”

“Kurenai? Are you okay?”

“Asuma, I think…I think we really are just better as friends.”

“…”

“I still care about you, but I don’t…want to keep doing this.”

“No, you’re…you’re right. I think I’ve known for a while too. Maybe in another universe it could’ve worked, and I really do like you, but we just aren’t…compatible enough, I guess.”

“I know. I just want you to know I enjoyed all the time we spent together. I still love you, just as a friend. We’re still friends- we are, right?”

“Kurenai, we’ll always be friends.”

* * *

 

“Anko?”

“Oh, hey,” Anko said, obviously surprised to see her. She was just coming out of her apartment, one hand still turning the keys in the knob, and barely spared her a glance when Kurenai emerged from the stairwell. “What’s up?”

“Oh, I was, uh…” _Coming to tell you I loved you_. “Nothing much. I just had some spare time. But, I, uh…” She glanced at Anko’s attire and felt a knot lodge itself in her throat. The other woman was dressed up, wearing the snake earrings Kurenai had gotten her for her birthday and the blouse from last year she’d claimed to hate but accepted anyway, a flowery thing with two green gemstones in the collar. Her heels were an inch higher than usual. Kurenai knew there were only two occasions Anko ever dressed up for: funerals and dates. “I just remembered that Asuma needed my help with something.”

“Oh.” Anko’s shoulders sagged the tiniest bit, and she scuffed one heel on the floor. “Ah. Right.”

“Yeah. I’ll just…let you…” Kurenai moved to the side and nodded at the stairs. Anko nodded back, just as awkward, and the two muttered goodbyes to each other. Kurenai watched the other woman’s heels as they disappeared from view.

“I’m an idiot,” she murmured to herself, sagging against the wall. Taking a deep breath, she ran a hand through her hair and stared at the floor. “I should’ve told her sooner.”

She stood there for several minutes, just staring into space in disappointment.

And then it occurred to her. _I can’t just give up,_ she thought, frowning and shoving off the wall. She fisted her hands in determination. “I can’t just give up!”

She fled down the stairs and out the front door of the apartment building, searching almost frantically for Anko’s chakra signature as thunder rumbled overhead. In her state she didn’t think of looking for an umbrella or anything to shield herself from the rain. She took off running as fast as she could.

Her feet carried her to the restaurant district. Rain started to hit the ground around her as people moved out of her way, shooting her looks that clearly communicated they thought she must be crazy.

She spotted Anko holding a newspaper above her head for cover and trotting towards the safety of a restaurant stand. “ _Anko!”_ she screamed, heart thudding in her chest. “Anko, wait!”

The other woman whipped around. Her eyes widened when she spotted Kurenai racing towards her, screaming and waving her arms. “What? What? What’s the matter?” she yelled back, running towards her as the downpour fell around them. “What’s-”

“Anko, wait!” Kurenai cried, skidding to a stop and nearly colliding with her. She planted her hands on her friend’s shoulders. “Wait-”

“Wait, what’s-”

“Don’t go on this date- I mean- not yet!” Kurenai blurted out, eyes wide and frazzled. Anko stared back at her with a startled expression. “I- I just can’t- I’m in love with you. I love you. I’m sorry it took me so long to see it, you’re my best friend, I love you so much please don’t go on this date without-”

“Kurenai, what the fuck?!”

Kurenai paused, panting, and stared. Anko stared back.

“You…you love me?”

“ _Yes_!” Kurenai burst, unable to tear her eyes way from Anko’s. “I don’t- I don’t understand all of it- I just know that I really like you, please don’t go on some date with some random woman without hearing me out at least-”

“You love me!” Anko interrupted, crowing it like a victory cry. “You love me!”

A wide grin split her face. She wrapped her arms around Kurenai’s midsection and swung her around, laughing. Kurenai held onto her and frowned in confusion.

“What’s- do you mean-”

“I love you too!” Anko set her down and beamed at her. “I have practically since I met you, you dumbass!”

Kurenai felt her eyes grow even rounder. “What?”

“Yeah! And now you love me too! Suck it!” Anko pumped her fist and hissed in victory, and Kurenai wasn’t sure who she was telling to suck it, but she could come up with a list of people.

“But then- aren’t you here for a date?”

Confused, Anko turned to stare at her. “A date?”

“Y-yeah. You…only ever dress up for dates. I thought…”

Anko glanced down at herself before throwing her head back and cackling. “I’m here for dango,” she wheezed, pointing at the shop behind them. Kurenai felt her cheeks heat in embarrassment. “I was, uh, gonna ask you to come with me, hence the _get-up_ , but then you got all weird.”

“Oh.” The blush deepened. “Sorry…”

“But it doesn’t matter now,” Anko told her, wearing a grin so bright it rivaled the sun. “Because you love me. And I love you.”

This time, her flush was for a different reason. “Anko…”

“Only been waiting six years,” Anko joked, and Kurenai realized that she considered that moment when she’d comforted her from a tree their first meeting. She smiled; she was glad Anko did too.

“You don’t have to wait anymore.” Kurenai brushed the wet strands of hair away from Anko’s face and leaned in, kissing her in the rain and in the street and after years of waiting. “Let’s go get some dango.”

“Now you really, really _are_ speaking my language.”


End file.
